Dental Assistants: Improve Your Income, Patient Outcomes

Many thanks to my good friend and co-founder of www.IgniteDA.net Kevin Henry for inviting me to speak with dental assistants about how to:

Improve Your Patient’s Outcomes and Your Practice Income!

I was asked to speak about the dental assistant’s role in marketing the practice and how maximizing the value of the practice to the patient, and the value of the patient to the practice, are two sides of the same coin.

As IgniteDA reminds its members: you’re not just working in a practice … you’re working in a small business. Every employee of that small business should be as empowered and mindful as possible regarding how he or she can improve the bottom line because, when the practice grows, everybody should be a winner: the owner, the patient, and you!

I was asked to share several novel ways the assistant can help the practice deliver more value by: embracing a ‘whole-person dentistry’ health model, enhancing team telephone skills to convert more calls into solid, kept appointments, connecting with current patients to make them ‘practice ambassadors’, and ‘wrapping the practice in a blanket of caring’ by adopting the concept of cause marketing.

Following is a printed excerpt.You may listen to the entire interview by clicking here.

Kevin: Good evening everybody. This is Kevin Henry. My guest for this evening’s webcast is Danny Bobrow. Danny is president of AIM Dental Marketing, executive director of the Dentists’ Climb For A Cause/SmileTree Foundation, founding executive committee chair of the American Academy for Oral Systemic Health, and Founder and Lead Coach of The Art of First Impressions Telephone Skills Mastery Curriculum.

ADM is the nation’s oldest full service dental marketing agency, and has helped thousands of dental practices to take aim with their marketing.Danny is here in Colorado and, since we’ve not seen each other for too long, I invited him to IgniteDA’s studio, my back patio overlooking a golf course here in lovely Longmont. Danny welcome to the program.

Danny: Thanks Kevin.

Kevin: Danny, in chatting prior to tonight’s webcast, you shared your thoughts on the various opportunities today’s dental assistant has to contribute to the success of their practice while also finding fulfillment in their own career. You mentioned specifically the dental assistant as “Idea Champion.” Would you care to elaborate?

Danny: Every idea needs a champion. Someone with the passion to ‘infect’ other Team Members and the practice owner, with the vision to help see it through to success. Among other credible sources, the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the Dental Assistant as performing a multitude of tasks, which run the gamut from delivering patient care to coordinating the patient schedule and keeping records. The scope of the DA’s duties is in part determined by the state in which they practice, as well as the particular office in which they work. In other words, the D.A. is potentially the Team’s most versatile and valuable player! Of course, the degree to which the assistant is able to exercise that versatility depends upon the particular office in which they are presently employed, but it is important to recognize that, with the right approach and talent, the dental assistant can, to a large extent, calibrate and optimized their position to match their unique talents and interests. That’s a rare and, I think, enviable characteristic profession to be in!

Kevin: You shared your company’s Vision, Mission, and Core Values statement, which also presents your various Pillars of Support for practices who share your vision of helping improve the health and longevity of people in the U.S. and the developing world. Perhaps you could share some of those Pillars with our audience, and how they might choose to use one or more of these to grow their practice while in the process advancing their career.

Danny: Sure. This speaks to the earlier point about being able to mold ones position to maximize your value to the practice. The first step is to understand your practice’s position, that is, its unique slice of ‘mental and emotional real estate’ it occupies in the area it serves. Once you’re clear concerning who you are, what you do, for whom you do it, and why, you may then proceed to identifying those actions which enhance and reinforce your market position. When we work with a dental practice we refer to successful practice growth as being a three-linked chain. The three links of the chain being to Attract the Lead, Convert the Lead, and keep or exceed Promises made to the lead (a lead is a prospective patient).

We like to begin with the end in mind, that end being Delivering On The Promise. Two of our Pillars of Support that help achieve that objective are adopting an oral systemic practice model and embracing cause marketing as a means for ‘wrapping your practice in a blanket of caring.’

Kevin: How do you help practice with that middle link of the success chain, namely, Converting the Lead?Danny: We help the Team master The Art of First Impressions.Kevin: Finally, how do you help practices Attract the Lead?

Danny: We do that through a number of tactics, which run the gamut from direct mail to public relations to digital marketing, including SEO, PPC, and Social Media. (I’ll focus on things the D.A. can do to help in this regard e.g. capture Patient Testimonial Videos, generate Patient Reviews, post relevant content to social media, etc.).

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